This is extremely dumb. If you're wasting money on something you stop spending money on it, you don't use it for the sake of using it.... that's still wasting money just less obvious.
That's why my company sold our building. The majority of employees wanted to continue working from home and the building wasn't big enough for our company anyway. It needed a lot of work so they sold it. No mention of a new facility or RTO in 3 years.
Breaking those types of leases and selling those types of buildings off or not trivial. They will need to figure out a way to ease out of the market, but until then, this is the way they rationalize it
Depends on the perception. If people see the company as weird or wasteful, it can hurt the company. Think of all the negative press companies get. It's not rational, but it exists and companies fight to minimize those sort of things.